Trump's Mexican tariff rope-a-doped critics
President Donald John Trump once again roped the dopes in the media with his Mexican tariffs.
Like Wile E. Coyote thumbing through the Acme catalog, they knew better but gave into their worst impulses.
To be sure, President Trump was deadly serious about the imposition of tariffs.
But he also knew he would not have to.
President Trump had the battle won the instant he tweeted tariff. The Mexican government did not bother putting up a fight. The words were kind and diplomatic, and the capitulation was swift and painless.
The government seized the money of human traffickers, sent thousands of its National Guardsmen to its southern border, and agreed to stop the caravans.
That was one success.
The other success was that in the wake of the stock market's indigestion over tariffs, the Federal Reserve lost its appetite for raising interest rates, much to the president's delight.
But the political side also had a success as President Trump watched his critics throw their grenades -- into telephone wires that shot the grenades right back at them.
National Review's editors huffed and puffed, "The president here is unnecessarily complicating his own life. He has just overseen the successful renegotiation of NAFTA, which will be reconstituted as the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). But that agreement has not yet been ratified — not by the United States, and not by Mexico. Imposing punitive tariffs over a policy dispute unrelated to trade five minutes after negotiating a new trade pact makes the Trump administration — and the United States — look like an unreliable negotiating partner. Mexico is not wrong to resent it, and even Trump allies such as Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) are against him on this.
"Also, it’s a good rule of thumb to fight one trade war at a time. If the administration, correctly, wants to focus on China’s malign trade practices — and not just during the current dispute but over the long term — it needs good trading relationships with its allies, especially here in North America."
Who knew there was a rule of thumb on trade wars?
You just hold up your thumb and contemplate how many trade wars you can have simultaneously.
Well, having won this trade war, President Trump is back to just one trade war. Whew.
Jeff Spross is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com.
He wrote on June 1, "President Trump is a self-described tariff man. But for a while now, he's been dogged by criticisms that he doesn't actually understand how his favorite tool for international economic arm-twisting really works.
"This week, Trump apparently decided to prove his critics right: He launched a whole new tariff threat against Mexico, not to curb any trade shenanigans, but to stem northward flow of undocumented immigrants. Specifically, Trump threatened to impose a tariff of 5 percent on all Mexican imports into the U.S., starting June 10. Each month after that, the tariffs will ratchet up another 5 percent, finally topping out at 25 percent in October. And there they will stay, according to the White House, 'until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory.' It's basically the equivalent of using a hammer to try to turn a lugnut."
And yet the lugnut came off.
Son of a gun.
He toys with his critics. He is the cat. They are the mice. He will never eat them. He will just torture them until he gets bored.
Not since James Polk has a U.S. president received concessions this big from Mexico. President Trump did it without sending in the Marines.
That is proof that tariffs save lives.
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